Public Domain

If you are an attentive reader and follow the latest trends in the publishing market, you probably noticed the great movement of publishers to publish their own version of George Orwell’s “1984” in 2021. The same movement happened in 2015 with the book “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

These works have already completed good years of age, having been published, respectively, in 1949 and 1943, and already have the ranks of classics of world literature. So why have so many different publishers bothered to make their own versions available so recently?

Well, the answer is simple: novels fell into the public domain in those years. Knowing this, new questions arise: What does the expression “fall into the public domain” mean and when exactly does this happen?

To understand the public domain, you need to understand what copyright is, we explain:

The authors of literary, artistic and scientific works have a number of rights to their objects of creation. These rights are divided between moral and patrimonial rights, which complement each other but are not confused.

Moral rights are inseparable from the person of the creator, that is, he cannot commercialize and transfer these rights by any instrument. A classic example of a moral right is the right to have your authorship recognized, so as to have your name linked to the work for all eternity.

On the other hand, the patrimonial rights of the author are those that can be taken advantage of financially. These, unlike moral ones, have a validity period and can be transferred to third parties, such as the right to reproduce the work, which is what happens when a musician allows his music to play in a movie, for example.

As a rule, authors enjoy these property rights while they are still alive. When they die, the heirs, if any, enjoy these rights for a period of 70 (seventy) years counted from January 1 of the year following the author’s death.

It is only after this period that the work falls into the public domain, when society begins to take advantage of the work free of patrimonial rights, without the need, therefore, for authorization or payment of any license amount, in order to break with the monopoly that was previously the author’s. This is what our Copyright Law provides (law nº 9.610, of 1998).

Soon, as George Orwell died in 1950, all his works fell into the public domain in the year 2021, which allowed the patrimonial rights, in particular the right to reproduce his books, to no longer belong to a single publisher (Companhia das Letras), but to all interested parties. That is why today it is possible to find a multitude of editions of his works, of all sizes, tastes and prices in bookstores, and, because of the immortality of moral rights, The Binding of the work to the author will remain even if it has “fallen into the public domain”.

Ana Carolina Gracio de Oliveira. Lawyer, graduated in law, from Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” (2020), enrolled in the Brazilian Bar Association, São Paulo Section (2021). Postgraduate in Civil and Business Law from Faculdade Damásio De Jesus. Author of articles. Head of the litigation department of TM Associados.